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About the Author
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In memory of Sue Gilmore
“Yaya and Shoo”
Acknowledgments
I had an enormous amount of support while writing this book. Many people responded to my questions with generosity and insight. The first is my editor, Catherine Richards, who went above and beyond, gently pushing for change where it was needed. I also thank Nettie Finn for her invaluable perception and for tidying up the mess I made with skill and grace. Eternal appreciation to my agent, Victoria Skurnick. Big bouquets of thank-you to Kayla Janas and Allison Ziegler, David Rotstein for the gorgeous cover, production manager Cathy Turiano, and production editor Chrisinda Lynch. Last but never least, copyeditor India Cooper and proofreader Laura Dragonette, who caught my errors before they made it into print! I thank the entire team at Minotaur for the title.
Several people and organizations were invaluable when it came to research. Among them:
Elizabeth Kerri Mahon for her early read and kind correction on fashion history, which saved me from looking stupid. (If you haven’t read her book Scandalous Women, please do so now.)
Leontine Greenberg for putting up with my endless clothing questions and providing invaluable research assistance.
Eric Peterson, who talked through music issues with me.
Reverend Mark Fowler, who reviewed points of religion and language choice.
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Among the many excellent works consulted for this book are 1913 by Florian Illies, The Light of Truth by Ida B. Wells, Harlem by Jonathan Gill, Jazz: A History of the New York Scene by Samuel B. Charters and Leonard Kunstadt, and biographies of Irving Berlin, especially Philip Furia’s Irving Berlin: A Life in Song. I am also indebted to They All Sang by Edward Bennett Marks for the title “Piano Tuners Benevolent Euchre and Whist League.” Allyson Compton’s “The Breath Seekers: Race, Riots, and Public Space in Harlem, 1900–1935” provided enormous insight into the issues of public space during this time. Otelia Brooks’s life passion was, in part, inspired by the glorious exhibit of Mae Reeves’s work at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Deep gratitude is due my comrades in the mystery-writing profession, especially the ladies of the Queens Writers Group. Most of all, I’m thankful to Josh and Griffin Weiss for their amazing support through this stage of my career.
And lastly—the readers! Thank you all for listening to my stories. I appreciate it more than you will ever know.
Something is wrong with the world. These men know.
—JAMES A. STILLMAN ON THE ARMORY SHOW
What is, or should be, woman? Not merely a bundle of flesh and bones, nor a fashion plate, a frivolous inanity, a soulless doll, a heartless coquette—but a strong, bright presence, thoroughly imbued with a sense of her mission on earth and a desire to fill it.
—IDA B. WELLS
The Princess of Wales has had a son.
Beyond that, I’m not sure.
My eyesight is not bad for someone of my age, but by any other measure, it is not good. Reading the newspaper has become a challenge. My glasses must be fixed at a precise point, the light sufficient, and the room quiet because I cannot read the words if I cannot hear them in my head. My daughter says this makes no sense, but they’re my eyes and it’s my head.
Raising the paper, I peer at the print, which I swear they’ve made smaller. The young man who shot the president has been found not guilty because he is insane. Apparently the would-be assassin wished to impress a famous young woman. I think of all the things one might do to impress such a woman. Killing the president is not one of them.
The same thought occurred to the jury; they found the young man’s reasoning so flawed, they decided it constituted insanity. They must have felt he was sincere; I might have thought he was lying. That he tried to kill the president not because he wanted a young woman to think well of him, but because he wanted to think well of himself. If he found it splendid to kill, she would also find it splendid and reward him.
Perhaps if the prosecutor had pointed out this level of self-interest to the jury, they might have told the young man and others like him that you cannot kill because you have come up with stories about women that are not true. No matter how alluring those stories might be. Helen of Troy was probably an ordinary-looking woman who had gotten bored with her husband and vice versa. But would we remember the heroes of the Trojan War if the Greeks were simply land-hungry? No, much better to say it was the face that launched a thousand ships. A woman’s face.
I wonder if this jury would have declared Achilles insane. Or if they might have understood that he had a compulsion to kill and Helen’s face was simply the excuse.
Or maybe the Greeks disliked that she ran away. A woman at liberty—that could be provocation enough.
I feel a curl of unease, a memory unfolding. A face.
For a moment I can’t breathe. Even after all these years, I can feel the vicious grip of those hands on my neck. There are days when I feel unsteady. I feel it now. A sense of falling, flailing …
I hold my head at the correct angle. Try to focus on the newspaper. The princess. The young man. But still I see that other face.
A woman’s face. Taken apart. Put back together.
And the scars, so many years later.
1
“‘Four score and seven years ago…’”
I looked up from the script. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Tyler. That’s the Gettysburg Address. You’re meant to be reciting the Emancipation Proclamation.”
“Am I?” Louise exhaled fretfully. “Oh dear.”
“‘That on the first day of January…,’” I prompted.
“‘… first day of January…’” Remembering the rest of her line, she rattled off, “‘In the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three…’”
“‘All persons held as slaves…’”
“‘… slaves…’”
“‘… shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.’”
“‘Forever free,’” Louise echoed, and removed her stovepipe hat. “What does thenceforward mean?”
“From now on, I suppose.”
“Well, why didn’t Lincoln just say so?”
As a lady’s maid, it wasn’t for me to defend the stylistic choices of the martyred sixteenth president. But while Lincoln had been eloquent in the face of civil war, congressional opposition, and the pistol of John Wilkes Booth, he had probably never faced a salon of society ladies, as Louise was preparing to do. In fact, he rarely visited the city, which had twice refused to vote for a Republican seen as insensitive to the commercial benefits of the slave trade.
However, it was the fiftieth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, and New York had embraced its commemoration with gusto. Which was how Louise found herself balancing a makeshift stovepipe as she struggled to recite Mr. Lincoln
’s great speech.
Bored by the traditional dinner parties, the city’s great ladies were keen to display their artistry in different ways. Tableaux vivants and amateur theatrics were the rage. One might enjoy Mrs. Halsey’s Brutus on Monday, Mrs. Foster Jenkins’s selections from Die Fledermaus Tuesday, and on Wednesday, Mrs. Fortesque’s torrid attempts at Apache dance. And so, led by Dolly Rutherford of Rutherford’s department store—the newest and most ostentatious of the ladies’ shopping paradises, which billed itself as the place “Where every American Beauty blooms!”—my employer Louise Tyler and others were to perform “Stirring Scenes of the Emancipation” in a week’s time.
Being tall and willowy, Louise had been chosen to play the Great Emancipator himself. This was an honor that one might have thought due the hostess. But Mrs. Rutherford was round of figure and short of stature. At one point, it was suggested she play Harriet Tubman, but in the end, she had accepted the almost equally, if not more, important role of Mary Todd Lincoln. (The part of Harriet Tubman went to Mrs. Edith Van Dormer. Having died earlier that month, Mrs. Tubman would be spared that performance.)
Now Louise sank into an armchair and gazed out the window at the mid-March morning. The calendar might say spring, but the chill air and dull skies showed that winter had not yet loosened its grip. A fire burned nicely, and the remains of Louise’s breakfast tea sat on the table beside her. The townhouse in the East Twenties was quiet, as William Tyler, her husband of eight months, was in Washington with Louise’s father, Mr. Benchley. There were rumors that Woodrow Wilson was working on a new sort of revenue system, a tax on actual income. The more one earned, the more one paid. Some considered this a monstrous assault, including Mr. Benchley, who had many friends in Washington and had gone to urge them to fight the president’s plan. He had taken his son-in-law and newly minted attorney with him, leaving Louise on her own and at the mercy of Dolly Rutherford.
I blamed myself for Dolly Rutherford. William Tyler’s mother and I had, between us, successfully shepherded Louise through her first six months as a New York matron. The senior Mrs. Tyler had introduced the junior Mrs. Tyler to the ladies she ought to know, warned her off those she should not, while I had polished her appearance and bolstered her confidence. When the elder Mrs. Tyler went to visit her daughter Beatrice, now husband hunting in Boston, she said to me, “I leave Louise in your capable hands, Jane.”
Mrs. Tyler had been gone but a day when I came down with gastric flu. With her mother-in-law away and me indisposed, Louise had fallen into the clutches of one of the city’s most limber and exhausting social climbers. Dolly Rutherford let it be known that she refused, just refused, to be idle. “To be idle is to be bored and to be bored is to die.” Her passion was the transcendent, especially in the arts. If it hung in a gallery or danced, sang, or declaimed upon the stage, Dolly Rutherford would lure it into her salon and display it, “flayed, dressed, and pickled,” as one critic put it. She might have been ridiculous except for two assets: a will worthy of Genghis Khan and her husband’s fortune. Stronger women than Louise Tyler had been pulled into Dolly’s orbit. I felt guilty nonetheless.
As the clock on the mantelpiece chimed nine, I hoped Louise would remember what today was before I had to remind her. But she noticed my glance at the clock and said, “Oh, it’s time, isn’t it?” Rising, she held out her hand. “What will I do without you?”
“You can reach me at the refuge anytime.”
“It’s your holiday, Jane—why don’t you go somewhere nice?”
“I want to see my uncle. And I have other plans as well.”
“Oh, and what are these plans?”
“I’m afraid some of them are shocking.”
“Jane!” Smiling, Louise put a hand to her chest. “Well, all right. Go and do your shocking things. But I’ll miss you at French lessons. And rehearsals. If Dolly Rutherford shouts at that poor seamstress from her husband’s store one more time, I’ll have fits. Still, I suppose it’s something to do.”
With a small sigh, she looked around the sitting room as if hoping distraction would present itself. Or her husband: I knew she was missing William. That much could be said for the Rutherford Pageant: it was a diversion.
With as much speed as was polite, I went upstairs to change. When William and Louise had moved to their new home, I had been given a spacious room on the top floor.
Taking off my daily outfit of plain skirt and shirtwaist, I pulled on a high-necked blouse and a dark skirt of jersey wool I’d made myself. Then I added a long navy jacket that had been left behind by Charlotte when she went to Europe. Then I put on my new hat, black felt, turned up at the front with a dark red rose at the side and a handsome velvet band. Finally, I put on my new coat, a present from the Tylers this past Christmas. It was also dark wool, but the cut was exquisite, with a hobble skirt, large baggy pockets, a wraparound bodice that buttoned daringly at the bosom, and a high collar. Looking in the mirror, I decided that while I was not quite Lillian Gish, I needn’t be ashamed to be seen in her company should she turn up at the International Exhibition of Modern Art.
For that’s where I was going, to mark the start of my vacation, the scandalous art exhibit known as the Armory Show. The exhibition of twelve hundred works by three hundred American and European artists had descended on New York in a blaze of sensation. It was the talk of the city, so popular that people went again and again, just to be seen. On one day, you might see Caruso sketching in a corner. On another, former president Roosevelt. Cartoonists depicted landmarks from the Statue of Liberty to the Brooklyn Bridge in the shocking new style dubbed Cubism. The artists had been lampooned as “nuttists,” “dope-ists,” “topsy-turvists,” and “toodle-doodlists.” Even official critics were uncertain as to the Cubists’ merits, asking, “Is their work a conspicuous milestone in the progress of art? Or is it junk?”
I was fairly sure I wouldn’t be able to decide either. But that wasn’t important. All that mattered to me on that cold March day was that the Armory Show was the most fashionable place to be in New York City and that I, Jane Prescott, would be there.
In service to absolutely no one but myself.
* * *
The 69th Regiment Armory was only a few blocks from the Tyler home in the East Twenties. Designed along elegant, modern lines with curved arches and a French mansard roof of limestone, the Armory welcomed visitors with a banner hung above the entrance: INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF MODERN ART. Limousines were already lining up outside, creating traffic jams as they disgorged their stylish passengers. As I joined the line to get in, I heard a man ask, “How does a minister’s niece come to be at this tawdry spectacle?”
I turned and saw Michael Behan. I had not seen him for several months, and an art exhibit was not where I expected to find him. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“I am paid to be here,” said the reporter. “Which is the only way you’d get me near the place. Are you going in?”
“I am.”
“Well, let the Herald pay your fare. Come on, I’ll give you the guided tour.”
As we sailed inside and past the guards, who seemed to know him well, I said, “Don’t tell me you’re now an art critic.”
He shook his head. “There are only so many ways to say bunk, garbage, con, and hooey, Miss Prescott. These fellows make P. T. Barnum look like an honest man. No, I’m here to cover the local color angle. Reactions of the average man and woman, with a bit of gossip about the famous who wander through.”
He handed our coats off at the coat check, then turned to me. “Now then, average woman. What would you like to see first?”
I gazed at the bustling, well-dressed crowd. I had dreamed of this for weeks, and now I was actually here. Thrilled to feel both free and in exactly the right place, I said, “I want to see every last bit of it, Mr. Behan.”
“Shall we start at the Chamber of Horrors?” This was the nickname for Gallery I, where the Cubists were displayed.
“Let’
s.”
I had last seen Michael Behan at the time of William and Louise’s wedding. It had been an uncertain time for me. I had not been sure of my place with the Benchleys, and just before the wedding, a young woman I knew had been murdered. The sudden end of her life had made me look at my own in a different light.
In such a mood, seeing Michael Behan, who was both good-looking and married, had been complicated. I realized now, I had let myself get caught up in all sorts of stupid ideas, taking letters he had written to me for something beyond what they were. Thankfully, I hadn’t made a fool of myself, and I could now be in his company without a trace of confusion. Yes, I was pleased to be seen in smart new clothes. But if women couldn’t take pleasure in having their attractions noted, a lady’s maid’s career would not thrive.
Gallery I was by far the most crowded. Craning to see over shoulders, I asked, “Where is Nude Descending a Staircase?” The painting by a Frenchman named Marcel Duchamp was said to be the most shocking of the entire show, and I was in a mood to be shocked.
“Right over here,” said Behan. “And I’ll give you a dollar if you can see anything remotely resembling a human being.”
The painting was mobbed, and it was a while before I could get even a glimpse of it. I confess, my first thought was Mud.
“Stunning, isn’t it?” said Behan. “Puts me in mind of a dropped book.”
I peered at the canvas, determined to see that nude. There was a briefest flash of comprehension—Oh, it’s like that, isn’t that astonishing?—before a beefy man elbowed me to one side and I was back to seeing muddy trees.
The reorientation of my eyes held enough that when we moved on to a sculpted head that looked made up of triangles and rectangles, I said truthfully, “That’s beautiful.” But I felt my face go red when we approached a black-and-white image of a nude woman. The strokes were rough and unlovely. She was well fleshed, her belly sloping, legs open. Avoiding Mr. Behan’s eye, I went on to Woman with Mustard Pot.
Death of an American Beauty Page 1